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Status Report: still not working

1 April 2020

Remember how I very optimistically said maybe I'd work on writing tutorials or overhauling the website last week? Uh, yeah, I wildly overestimated my ability to function while fighting off the plague. Basically, I spent an entire week just... being flat, and occasionally being able to focus long enough to read or talk to people.

I never did get sick enough to get tested or need hospitalization, although I had a few scary moments and I've used an inhaler more in the past week than I typically did in an entire year back when my asthma was actually symptomatic. The shortness of breath is improving and I'm starting to feel relatively normal as long as I don't try to do anything - the fever still keeps coming back every few hours, so I haven't even been able to start the clock on a 72 hour symptom-free period.

At this point I'm assuming that the absolute soonest I could possibly be back to work is next Monday, and it will probably be longer - it sounds like most people take 2-3 weeks to fully shake off a mild case of it. I'm on either day 9 or day 10 right now, depending on whether or not you count the day when I didn't realize I was having symptoms, and as I said in my last post, once I get through 72 hours with no fever, I'll need to spend at least a full day disinfecting things before I go back to work.

Today I finally managed to enable the gift card functionality that was rolled out to sellers at all account levels last week, so if you'd like to give somebody a gift card, or buy one to use yourself when I'm back up and running, you can do that!

That said - I've built up a decent emergency fund over the past few years and my overhead expenses are extremely low, AND New Hampshire made unemployment benefits available to people who are self-employed, so a few weeks of not being able to work will NOT create a financial crisis for me. That's not the case for a lot of small businesses, so PLEASE prioritize supporting your local small businesses and any artists who are living a lot closer to the wire than I am!

This is going to be a rough time for all of us, and the only way we're getting through it is by helping each other along the way.

I need to go put on clean pajamas and make sure the child eats something before I log onto Zoom for a board meeting at 7, so I'll post this now - stay safe, take care of each other, wash your hands, STAY HOME!